The Chinese government has widened its crackdown on vulgar content found on the Internet

Shortly after confirming it launched a campaign to purge the internet of pornography and other lewd content, the Chinese government has banned at least 41 additional web sites for various reasons.

The online porn crackdown began more than one week ago, started by the State Council's Information Office and Public Security and Culture ministries, along with several other government agencies. Nineteen Chinese web sites have been blacklisted, with Google.cn, Baidu and Microsoft MSN also on the list of temporarily banned web sites.

Pornography distribution is illegal in China, but the easy availability of internet has made it difficult for the government to limit access to adult content.

Google was also chastised by the Chinese government for not being proactive enough to block pornographic content in mainland China. While Google and Baidu offer links to lewd content, MSN was accused of linking to inappropriate images on its film channel and pictures that can be found in other parts of the web site.

The government has already shut down around 100 web sites since the campaign's launch, and it's unknown how many more sites the government is expected to shut down during the oncoming weeks.

Amnesty International and similar groups have criticized the Chinese government over its strong censorship practices, saying the internet crackdown is taking place ahead of several politically sensitive activities.

Despite the crackdown and censorship of the Internet, Chinese citizens continue to flock to the internet, as the country now has more than 300 million people using the internet.

"We basically took a look at this situation and said, this is bullshit." -- Newegg Chief Legal Officer Lee Cheng's take on patent troll Soverain